


the art of currying favour

by headlong



Series: two love letters [2]
Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Relationship Study, chikaita romcom boogaloo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:47:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22832773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlong/pseuds/headlong
Summary: When a new Chikausa post confirms that the curry blogger has a partner, his fandom clamours for them to write a guest review - so Itaru, insecure in his relationship with Chikage, decides to step up to the plate. And it shouldn't even be hard, considering he writes stuff all the time anyway.…Right?
Relationships: Chigasaki Itaru & Arisugawa Homare, Chigasaki Itaru & Mikage Hisoka, Chigasaki Itaru/Utsuki Chikage
Series: two love letters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1645423
Comments: 26
Kudos: 286





	the art of currying favour

**Author's Note:**

> just as a heads-up, you don't actually need to have read the spiritual prequel to this fic to understand anything that happens here! but still: if you did read, kudos, comment on, tweet about, or consider "to the fair unknown" in any way, please know that i really appreciated it.

_ ~ Chikausa’s Curryiously Spicy Curry Blog ~ _

_ RESTAURANT REVIEW: “Some Like It Hot” _

_ December 6 _

_ Many people – though perhaps not readers of this blog – would consider a date at a curry restaurant to be an unappealing prospect. And yet new eatery Some Like It Hot, found on the trendiest block of Veludo Way, is proposing you shake off the spice stigma and do just that. Billing itself as a hot date location both literally and metaphorically, the owner’s hope (you can read an interview with him  _here _) is that love can bloom even among the vindaloo. Accordingly, the menu is a smorgasbord of curries from around the world, intended to get temperatures rising. But does the curry live up to the hype? And, moreover, can a relationship survive the heat? _

_ “This is the worst idea ever,” my partner complains once we’re seated, as if they haven’t been saying the same thing since we left the house. “If someone brought me here on a first date, I’d bolt ASAP. Before I caught a terminal case of curry stan.” _

_ It’s a Monday night, and the restaurant is surprisingly busy. In line with the intimate mood Some Like It Hot is aiming for, the lighting is dim, the seating consists mostly of two-person tables, and the whole place is lit by candles. Between all of that, and the fact we’re tucked into the very back corner, I decide I can get away with a little teasing. _

_ “And yet you’re still here.” _

_ “Yeah, cause you subject me to worse things all the time. What’s that say about you, huh?” _

_ “I think it says more about  _ you _,” I say, “because you’re still going to kiss me with curry breath anyway.” My date kicks me under the table for that comment – but, as predicted, they don’t actually leave. _

“This is all very interesting,” Chikage says, looking up from Itaru’s phone, “but why are you showing it to me?”

Itaru gifts his boyfriend with the biggest, most sarcastic eye-roll he can muster. “Come on, senpai. We both know you wrote this.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

It’s a perfectly ordinary Wednesday evening, and they’re burning the hour or so before dinner in their room. Even though they drove to and from work together, and got lunch at a new Indian place near their office, and have Spring Troupe practice later tonight, and are going to end up sleeping in the same bed. Because as it turns out, one of the embarrassing side effects of being in a relationship is that Itaru wants them to be together basically all the time, provided he isn’t busy with rehearsal or games. Which obviously isn’t feasible, seeing as they’re both working adults with busy lives – but by mutual agreement, this is their dedicated block of Boyfriend Time, when they both do their best to be free.

Today they’re on the couch, huddled over Itaru’s phone. This late in the year, the heating in the dorm is on full blast, but Chikage’s body temperature somehow feels like it’s running even warmer. They’re as tangled up as usual, and Itaru’s legs are mostly in Chikage’s lap; Chikage’s hand is on the inside of Itaru’s thigh, thumb smoothing back and forth, slow but regular. And he’d probably be desperately, pathetically turned on by that if he wasn’t also trying to prove an important point. He jabs his boyfriend in the chest.

“Okay, then, I’ll lay it out for you. For one, Chikausa says they went on Monday. That’s when  _ we _ were there.”

“It was a busy night. This could’ve been written by any one of those patrons.”

“Fine, point taken. But also, literally everything that happened on this date happened to us? Like how we had this exact conversation. Or how Chikausa says he tried to talk his partner into ordering the special dessert curry, but didn’t succeed, and  _ you _ did that to me as well.” 

“Those both sound like coincidences too. There aren’t that many interactions a couple can have in a curry restaurant, after all. Particularly one with such an attention-grabbing house special.”

“Okay, still being evasive. Guess I have to bring out the big guns.” Itaru scrolls down the page to the photograph Chikausa had posted of that night’s curry, swipes away a notification about his LP being full in one of his fifty idol games, then turns his phone back around. “I remember you taking this picture.”

“It’s the kind of food photo that could’ve been taken by anybody, right down to the angle of the spoon. I’m sure there are a hundred just like it on any social media platform.”

“Senpai. My arm is it.”

And it is, undeniably, Itaru’s arm. Not because it has any distinguishing features, or because there’s any skin showing, or because it looks particularly masculine – it’s actually an astoundingly gender-neutral arm, which is probably for the best – but because the elbow that rests on the corner of the table is clad in the same sweater he’s wearing right now. It even has a tiny hole starting to come in at the exact same place. To demonstrate, he holds his real-life arm up as a comparison, then gestures back and forth.

“Oh,” Chikage says blandly. “So it is.”

“So you confess to being Chikausa, then?”

“No.” He’s too dignified to flinch when Itaru pokes him again, but his expression does crumble a little at the edges. “Maybe. Does it matter if it’s true?”

“I mean, yes and no. I’m not gonna go after you for being internet famous, obviously, but I guess I’m kinda mad you weren’t honest about it earlier.”

“It’s a hobby, Chigasaki. I’m not sure what there is to be angry about, especially since you’re hardly a nobody online, either.”

“I’m not mad cause you didn’t tell me you were a big deal on the Deep Curry Web,” Itaru says, as patiently as he can, and pockets his phone. “I’m mad cause you went and blogged about me without saying anything. I’ve never said anything about you in my streams, you know. But now all your fans know I exist, and think I’m your live-in girlfriend, and I don’t know what you expect me to do. Did you read the comments on that post?”

“I read the one about how lucky I am to be with a ‘gamer girl’.”

“No, really, I’m trying to be serious. Cause your fans won’t stop asking about who could be good enough for the famous Chikausa. They want you to… tell them about me, or something. And some are even saying they want me to write a  _guest post._ Can you imagine?” That makes Chikage’s expression set into something dangerously thoughtful, but Itaru keeps going regardless. “Like, what would I even have to say about curry?  _ This one was spicy. This other one was not spicy. If you want to make curry in the latest Monster Haunter game, you first have to unlock the recipe by_ –”

“Well, do you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Write a guest post about curry.”

Itaru’s reflexive comeback dies on his lips, because Chikage actually looks serious. And on one hand: no, he doesn’t, not even remotely. Through a series of trials and tribulations, he’s ultimately settled in as a curry-agnostic among the curry-aficionados and the curry-fatigued of the Mankai dorm. Despite everything, he doesn’t have a single strong feeling about the stuff. Even though he’s been with the new Mankai Company since the start – since before they gained Omi, when Spring Troupe had to live through Izumi’s curry-only meal planning, back when a good day meant Tsuzuru deciding to have mercy and volunteer for dinner duty – he’d still be hard-pressed to talk about curry in any meaningful detail. He just doesn’t get it. Oh, he’ll listen to Chikage or Izumi or any of the dorm’s spicy-food weirdos go on about whatever they like, because they’re his friends, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be lost on him.

But, on the other: Chikage’s love language is indecipherable. If somebody so fundamentally unromantic even has one, that is. Because he doesn’t seem to mind spending all this time together, and he initiates about half of their casual touches, and he’s definitely on board for the physical side of their relationship, but that hardly spells out where he’s at emotionally. They’d made sure to talk about their feelings before they’d gotten involved, months ago, but it seems impossible to ask for an update on where they might stand now. And equally difficult for Itaru to gauge as much on his own; to work out if Chikage’s feelings have stayed the same, or if, like his, they’ve grown so large they’ve spilled out of his heart and have clogged up his lungs.

The problem, in short, is that Itaru is stupidly in love with someone who might not love him back yet. (If he’s capable of that kind of love at all; if he could even bring that to bear on someone like Itaru, who still only feels like enough most days.) And this blog-post proposal feels like the first sign he’s gotten in a long while that, maybe, their relationship is heading in the right emotional direction.

“Yeah. I’ll do it.”

Chikage’s too good at what he does to look noticeably surprised, but there’s an instant where his eyes crease in a way that almost betrays him. “You will?”

“Yeah. Unless you’ve got a problem with that, senpai?”

“No, there’s no problem. I’m looking forward to reading what you come up with.”

God, this is such a dumb fucking idea. The amount of research he’s going to need to do just to be able to write this, just to pretend he has literally any idea what he’s talking about, is insane. It’s going to eat into all his gaming time. Hell, he  _ still _ can’t even tell Zahran spices from Indian ones without serious prompting. (Although at least the actual writing part should be easy; he writes for the Mankai blog all the time.) But if agreeing makes Chikage’s face soften like that, quietly but sincerely, like some part of him might actually be honest about his feelings, like Itaru can pretend for a moment that he’s not the only one in love here – well, how dumb can it be, really?

*

As it turns out, the answer is  _ very.  _ Itaru’s on track to have a perfectly predictable Thursday, one of absolutely no consequence, right up until lunch hits and Chikage shows up at his desk and, abruptly, it strikes him that he’s agreed to write a piece on a subject he knows almost nothing about, for the sake of… well. He admittedly hasn’t worked out what kind of emotional validation he hopes to gain, only that he does. And, either way, now that he thinks about it, this is still a pretty average day post-Mankai.

“Chigasaki?”

Chikage’s peering curiously at him over the wall of his cubicle. Itaru strives valiantly for a recovery, and plasters on his most sincere fake smile. “Senpai! Good afternoon. What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping to talk my favourite junior into getting lunch.”

Mentally, he runs through the list of other things he could or should be doing. He’s not going particularly hard in any mobage at the moment, because most of his games are holding off in advance of big Christmas campaigns, or else running events where he can get one copy of the SSR and then relax; he doesn’t have any real work commitments until later in the afternoon; and they’ve only done lunch once this week, meaning they’re still okay on the amount of time they can spend together in work contexts, without tipping anyone off about their relationship.

Oh. But he does have that tiny matter of planning what he’s going to do about the Chikausa guest post. And he knows, for a fact, that he won’t do any strategising about it at home. Partly because he shares a room with Chikage and is determined to go solo, partly because there are more immediately-gratifying things he could be doing, and mostly because it’s hard to schedule time to himself when he lives in a dorm full of people who love to get him caught up in things.

(Or, alternatively: he could still back out of this. He could just play off agreeing to write the post as a joke, and go to lunch with Chikage, and keep on chasing himself in circles about the state of his boyfriend’s feelings; but he already knows he can’t do that. Even though he’s grasping at straws here, sometimes straws are the only things in reach.)

“Sorry, senpai. Not today.”

Chikage would never do something as banal as look disappointed, but he doesn’t not look disappointed. “I see. Sorry to have bothered you, then.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I have a meeting.”

“During your lunch break?”

“It’s an incredibly important meeting.”

“Look,” he says, “it’s not –”

_ Not like that, _ he’d meant to say. But not like… what, exactly? It feels impossible, somehow, to say what he means; not like a crack in their relationship, not like the kind of thing worth that transparent lie about a meeting. Because neither of those defenses feels like they’ll manage to patch over this sudden fissure. And by the time he’s fumbled through figuring that much out, Chikage’s already stepped back from his cubicle.

“You don’t need to make excuses to me, Chigasaki. I’ll see you later.”

Fuck!

Itaru tries not to make it too obvious that he’s watching him leave, and sinks unhappily in his chair. Well. That hadn’t gone at all like he’d been hoping. But they’ve come back from actual fights before, so surely they can come back from whatever this is. 

And he does at least have a trump card in their relationship for once, kind of, maybe. So he makes a beeline for the place in their office that he always goes when he doesn’t want to be found: the fire stairwell, three floors down. But today, he’s here not for mobage – but for a purpose which is, if not noble, at least offline.

He takes out his phone, mostly as an emotional crutch. It is, perhaps, time to admit to himself that he has no idea where to begin. In terms of approaching this post, yes, but also in terms of thinking about how it’s going to somehow translate into Chikage professing his love and breaking this weird emotional deadlock. But it’s also not like there’s a  _ better _ approach to that second thing, so here he is.

At least there’s one thing he can do about this whole business, even if it might not actually lead him anywhere useful. Opening his phone browser, he navigates to Chikausa’s Curryiously Spicy Curry Blog, and starts to read.

It’s annoying, if unsurprising, to discover that Chikage’s posts are really well-written. More so than his posts on the Mankai Company blog, to be honest. And Itaru doesn’t usually bother feeling inadequate about dating a man who’s good at everything, because it’d get old fast, but this is testing him. Every post he skims through is… surprisingly compelling, even by the standards of someone indifferent about curry, and before he’s even realised it, he’s burned half his lunch break reading entries from the last year.

And as he picks his way back through the archives, a pattern starts to emerge. What’s interesting is that, in older entries, Chikage usually implies that he’s eating alone. There are some notable outliers – a couple of posts mention him dining with a friend who’s clearly Izumi, because there’s no mistaking the way their director talks about curry – but they’re in the minority. But, starting a few months ago, nearly all his reviews start to mention a companion. The  _ same _ companion, of conveniently unspecified gender, who he increasingly seems to suggest is his partner, before he gives up and just admits as much.

“Deep Chikausa lore,” Itaru says to himself, because it’s easier to joke about it than to let himself get his hopes up over the fact Chikage likes him enough to keep discussing him in front of an audience of thousands. “Wonder if there’s a wiki.”

As it turns out, there is indeed: _ Chikausa’s Curryiously Spicy Wiki. _ Which is bizarre, because a blog about curry doesn’t seem like a canon which would lend itself to that. But then again, he supposes, curry otaku are still a kind of otaku, and if there’s one thing that all otaku have in common, it’s a love for obsessively organising information. Accordingly, the wiki about Chikausa keeps track not just of the restaurants he’s visited, and the reviews he’s posted, but also everything he’s said about his life offline; and there’s a whole section dedicated to collecting the hints he’s dropped about just that. Under the  _ known associates _ heading, the  _ possible girlfriend  _ page is linked right below the one titled  _ sweets-loving brother. _

And. Well. What is he going to do, not click on that?

It’s a short page, and a comparatively new one, so it loads fast. Chikausa’s fans haven’t managed to put together much about his mysterious girlfriend yet: just that it’s likely the two of them met through work (true), that they’re all but confirmed to live together (true, even if they were living together as roommates long before they were living together as boyfriends), and that she seems to display some tsundere tendencies toward him (both untrue and offensive). And while it’s an amusing diversion, it’s also admittedly not very helpful.

Distantly, it occurs to Itaru that he’s both kind of hungry and wasting his precious lunch break.

So he makes himself close the wiki, because as funny as this tangent is, he still hasn’t made any progress on the chore he actually needs to be doing. Because if he wants to write about curry, he’s going to have to know about curry. Or at least, go out of his way to eat it, rather than passively consuming it all the time as a byproduct of living with Izumi and dating Chikage.

And so. He tabs over to LIME, and opens his chat with the director.

>hey can i ask something

He stares at that message for almost a solid minute, weighing it up, but he can’t bring himself to press send. It doesn’t help that LIME says Izumi was last online several hours ago, which about lines up with when Itaru saw her on the way out this morning. She had said something about having plans all day, sitting in on another troupe’s practice session as a favour to a friend, and then getting coffee with someone from a party interested in collaborating with Mankai Company; not to mention how busy she’s been with corralling the Summer and Autumn Troupes lately, on top of the work it already takes her to keep the dorm running.

And Itaru might be kind of selfish, and still learning how to let himself live around others, but he’s not enough of an ass to effectively drop his relationship drama on Izumi’s plate when she’s always so busy. And when she always looks so tired, as much as she might try to deny it.

He backspaces that draft, and clicks his phone off.

The rest of the day doesn’t go any better. He scarfs down a dry convenience-store lunch, muddles through the rest of his workload, and drives home mostly on autopilot. And because Chikage’s working late, Itaru’s left alone with his thoughts the whole time. Which isn’t usually a problem, since his thoughts are usually split comfortably between theatre and games and his boyfriend and the rest of Mankai, but today they’ve all been squeezed aside by the elephant in his cranium, and that elephant is curry.

(Okay, maybe he lost control of that analogy. Whatever. It’s testament to how distracted he is by this whole thing.)

He does feel more human for getting home, changing into casual clothes, and crunching through his stamina in the mobage he’s been neglecting, though. Because even if none of those things help him with his actual issue, they do a lot to prepare him for it emotionally.

Still, it remains a fact that the path to writing convincingly about curry begins with eating curry. And not Izumi’s curry, either, as lovingly made as it is, but real restaurant-quality curry from a real curry restaurant.

The Itaru who had just joined Spring Troupe would’ve been appalled to see him now, passing up a perfectly good homemade meal in favour of slinking off to spend real, actual money on curry. But the present Itaru is, apparently, so head over heels for his curry-freak boyfriend that he’ll do anything, so the old Itaru can shut it.

That said: he’s still not so far gone that he’s willing to do this alone.

Nobody answers when he knocks on the door of room 101, which is really unfortunate. Citron would’ve been his first choice of curry companion, on account of his good humour, knowledge about food, and general fondness for all things spicy; and Sakuya would’ve been his second, because even though he’s about as useless a gourmet as Itaru, he’d at least have been good about this whole business.

Tsuzuru’s probably occupied with something or other, too. And while Masumi is probably free, it’s a difficult sell to get him to go anywhere, and Itaru absolutely isn’t in the mood to drag him into this. To say nothing of all the unsolicited commentary he’d offer, none of which would be useful.

On top of that, both Summer and Autumn Troupes are working flat out to prepare for upcoming engagements, which doesn’t help either. The most obvious issue is that it rules out Omi, but it also rules out Banri; which is bad, since Banri’s one of the people who’d most easily agree to accompany him, but also good, since Banri would needle him mercilessly about being dumb enough to get himself into this in the first place, and Itaru really doesn’t need his mental Greek chorus to be externalised.

Which means, if he doesn’t want to go solo, that leaves… Winter Troupe. Or Matsukawa, but he’d kind of rather not.

Well, whatever. Giving up, he stumps into the lounge, only to find it bizarrely empty, and nobody in sight. There isn’t a single sign of life anywhere, which is especially weird at this hour. It’s usually impossible to walk in here at – he checks his phone: six thirty – without tripping over high-schoolers doing their assignments and adults unwinding after their workdays and vultures of all ages hovering around the kitchen in anticipation of dinner. But that doesn’t mean he can give up just yet.

“Hello?” he tries.

Nothing. Zilch. Which is eerie, but it’s also really unhelpful. So he makes a slow loop around the room, as much to stave off his slowly mounting despair as to actually try and find someone he’s overlooked, and –  _ there. _

Hisoka’s curled on one of the couches, invisible from the angle where Itaru walked into the lounge. On his side, one eye out of view behind his fringe, face tucked against his hands. His breathing is very, very quiet.

Which is kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, a companion is a companion, and he’s not going to turn that down. But on the other: even though they knew each other for a year before the Mankai rookies entered the picture, the long shadow of Chikage hangs between them.

Because Chikage never  _ talks _ about Hisoka. They’re not nothing to each other, Itaru knows that much, but he still almost never sees them interact. Or hears them discuss each other, even when pressed – and almost nobody in the dorm presses them about it, any more, not when it’s so obvious that it would be better to let things lie.

(In hindsight, maybe he should have read the  _ sweets-loving brother _ page on the Chikausa wiki. Because then maybe he’d at least know what he’s working with; because Chikage’s fans might know more about his relationship with Hisoka than Itaru does, even though he’s lived with the pair of them for months and months, and never been fearless enough to ask.)

But nevertheless, on their own, Itaru and Hisoka get along just fine. Or he thinks they do, anyway. It can be difficult to tell how Hisoka feels about a lot of things. And either way, he’s both already emotionally committed to this, and not morally above waking someone up to drag them on an errand.

“Hey.” He pitches his voice low, but intense. “Hisoka.”

No response. Which is about what he had expected, but it was still worth starting out with the non-violent, sugar-free solution. Also, now he’s justified in escalating his methods.

Fortunately for his dinner quest, there’s a packet of marshmallows in the pantry – or, more accurately, a tiny handful of marshmallows left in a twisted-up bag, pushed into the back corner of one of the shelves. According to the label, they’re… sticky date pudding flavour, with lashings of butterscotch? He’s both seen and eaten his share of weird junk food in his time, and it’s still beyond him where his dormmates even manage to find this stuff.

Regardless: armed and ready, he returns to Hisoka.

The first marshmallow Itaru drops onto his sleeping dormmate’s face hits his cheek with a  _ plap, _ and rolls off into the depths of the couch cushions. The second misses Hisoka’s face entirely, because this kind of hand-eye coordination is surprisingly difficult. The third lodges itself somewhere in his hair. None of them manage to coax any reaction out of him, though, and while Itaru has time to spare, the same can’t be said for his stash of marshmallows.

So he leans down and, gingerly, holds his very last marshmallow against the gap between Hisoka’s lips.

Nothing changes, except for the slight whistling of his breath around this new obstruction. But then Hisoka’s jaw works, and the bait disappears into his mouth in one fluid movement. He chews, swallows, and then his eyelids flutter and open into slits.

“Nn. Butterscotch…?”

“Hey. Wanna go out for dinner with me tonight?”

Hisoka blinks himself awake and stares at him distrustfully, maybe because he’s annoyed about being woken up, or maybe because he’s just like that. Or both. Either way, Itaru makes himself strike on, even after Hisoka sits up, and the marshmallow nestled in his hair slides off and bounces away.

“I know it’s sudden, but this curry blogger offered me the chance to write a guest post for them, and I need to do a ton of research. And I figured I’d start by getting dinner at a curry restaurant, and I don’t wanna go on my own. But also, if you come with, you can’t tell anyone. Not a word. So, you in?”

There were, technically, no lies in any of those statements. And he’s just patting himself on the back for managing that feat when Hisoka calls his bluff, in the most obvious way possible.

“Take Chikage.”

“Long story, but I can’t do that.”

“…Did he end things with you?”

“What? No. First of all, we haven’t broken up. And second of all,  _ if,  _ in theory, we  _ had, _ why would you assume it was him? I’m just as likely to call this off as he is. And by that I mean, not at all. Because this whole question is pointless, since, like I said: we haven’t broken up, and we aren’t going to. So.”

Hisoka’s giving him the same flat look.

“What?”

“…He dumped you.”

“He did  _ not dump me!_” Itaru realises his voice is pitching, reins himself in. They might be alone for now, but that could change at any moment, and hysteria is a bad look in this situation anyway. “Listen, we’re fine. Really. But, for whatever reason, I can’t bring him with me this time, okay? Just, come with me. And if it’s a money thing, I guess I can pay.”

“It’s not about the money. I don’t like spicy food.”

God, it’s just his luck that the only person he can find around the dorms is also the only one who doesn’t even like curry. Running out of options, he grasps at the first straw that his subconscious offers him – and, bizarrely enough, after spending so much time around so many forthright people, that straw is the honest approach.

“Yeah, sure, but I… I don’t know, maybe it’d be interesting to do something with you for once? We don’t have anything in common, besides theatre, so we never hang out. But I guess, now…” He spreads his fingers, hoping to convey everything he can with his next word. “Chikage.”

“Chikage,” Hisoka echoes.

“Even if things with him are weird at the moment, you do mean something to him. And if you mean something to him – I don’t know. I want you to mean more than you do to me, too.”

Hisoka’s silence, as he thinks about all of those things, is crushing in its absoluteness. And Itaru, desperate and buckling under its weight and wholly unsure what hornets’ nest he’s just stuck his foot into, drags himself towards the most stable ground he can think of.

“Anyway, I know a place that does a dessert curry. It comes with marshmallows.”

Which seems to be, if not the right thing to say, at least the not-wrong thing; Hisoka’s visible eye sharpens. And that’s how Itaru ends up back at that stupid curry-date restaurant with his boyfriend’s… something, watching Hisoka dissect what looks like a rainbow milkshake, just distributed horizontally. And while he’s no curry apologist, he does take a moment to be quietly outraged on Chikage’s behalf. That doesn’t do justice to junk food  _ or _ curry.

“So,” he says, mashing his spoon into his untouched beef massaman. He’s hungry, yeah, and he’s going to regret it later if he doesn’t eat properly, but looking at the multicoloured monstrosity in front of him has kind of taken the edge off his appetite. “Any thoughts on the dessert curry so far?”

“There aren’t enough marshmallows.”

“Uh-huh. Any other thoughts?”

“…The cotton candy melted.”

Itaru peers into his companion’s rainbow dinner nightmare. It’s true; the cotton candy has indeed dissolved, probably as an effect of leaving it uneaten for too long, floating uselessly atop the dessert curry – the  _ milkshake. _ Who is he kidding, it’s a fucking milkshake. 

“Right,” he says. “Well. Thank you for coming anyway.”

*

Despite the less than stellar contribution from his companion, he does leave Some Like It Hot for the second time having taken notes about the experience, and having learned that (surprise, surprise) he actually knows far more about curry than he’d thought. And thus armed, Itaru sits down at his PC after work the next day to take a crack at writing something up. It’s just a practice round – because he’ll need to find a brand new curry place to review for the real thing – but it still seems like a useful exercise. It only makes sense to try and raise his skills before taking on an important challenge, after all. And at least he has snacks, namely a melon soda, so he doesn’t have to do this wholly unsupported.

It’s maybe telling that his gaming PC doesn’t have a word processor installed on it, but that’s fine. He’d rather work directly on the cloud anyway. In just a few more moments, he has his browser open to a new document, with the encouraging title “Document1”. And really, creating the file is pretty much half the battle.

Well. Onto writing the review. The curry review. The review of the curry, which he has agreed to write, in a desperate and frankly illogical attempt to magically turn a chance at a guest post into a guarantee of romantic stability.

He flicks through his notes for the twentieth time. He cracks open his soda. He contemplates getting up to access his snack stash properly, and retrieve some chips. He wonders, idly, just how long he has before Chikage gets back from whatever errand has taken him from room 103, at which point Itaru will have to pretend to be doing something of no consequence. He checks the desktop clock, and finds that all of three minutes have passed. He thinks about how this is the way he’s choosing to spend part of his Friday evening. He finishes his soda. But, no matter how hard he stares at the document, no words seem to come to him. The cursor blinks at him, defiant in its patience – and it dawns on him that he hasn’t really written anything more creative or intense than a Mankai blog post since high school. Which, now that he thinks about it, was actually quite a long time ago.

He rolls his shoulders back. Tries to crack his knuckles; succeeds only in crushing his pinky finger, and barely suppresses a wince. Sets his hands to the keyboard anyway.

_ Last night, we went back to Some Like It Hot. I ordered the beef massaman curry _

Yeah, that reads about as compellingly as he’d expect from a guy who mostly composes emails. Out of nowhere, he suddenly recalls being in second grade, and being made to write a recount about a class trip to the museum; but this honestly reads even worse, because it completely lacks any of the joy he had experienced at getting to see dinosaur skeletons. Irritably, he backspaces that and starts again.

_ I don’t really care for curry, but _

Probably just going to get him doxxed by rabid Chikausa enthusiasts, furious that their idol is dating someone who doesn’t know his korma from his keema, or his chili powder from his… something else. He’s going to have to lead into that one.

_ I’ve eaten a lot of curry in the last year and a half, _

Super boring.

_ The _

Amateur hour.

_ When Chikage asked me if I wanted to write a guest post on his blog, I thought: why does this feel like the first hint you’ve dropped in weeks about the depth of your feelings? _

What is this, a soap opera? A teen girl’s diary? He’s a grown man, and he feels embarrassed just looking at that.

_ What’s up curry fans and welcome to my _

No!

God, though, this feels hopeless. Itaru drops his arms and lets his head thunk against the desk. All the openings he’s tried feel either completely impersonal and devoid of all feeling, or have him too inextricably woven into them.

Well. Maybe he can skip the opening and come back to it, in favour of getting to the parts he won’t overthink as much. He picks himself up, glances at his notes again, smashes the Enter key about ten times, flexes his fingers.

_ I’m still not amazing with spicy food, so I tried to order one that was only decently spicy, and it turned out to be just spicy enough _

That won’t do. He’s just used the same word three times in one sentence, but hell if he knows how to interestingly describe a curry beyond calling it spicy – wait, hang on. There are techniques for getting around this, ones which even he knows, because this happens to him sometimes when he’s drafting emails. Sneakily, he opens a new browser tab and googles “synonym for spicy”.

The results don’t exactly impress him. There’s  _ piquant, _ but that’s too much; nobody, in his humble opinion, has ever used that word and meant it.  _ Tangy  _ feels too mild, pun begrudgingly acknowledged. And  _ hot _ is so… entry-level. That definitely won’t fly with the kind of curry freaks who flock to read Chikausa’s reviews, who want to read phrases like  _ the naan weaves half of a gustatory duet alongside the in-your-face punch of the house special ghost-pepper curry, _ or whatever it was Chikage had written about Some Like It Hot’s signature dish. 

Then again, Chikage does write like someone who’d use the word  _ piquant. _ So.

_ I’m still not amazing with spicy food, so I tried to order one that was only decently piquant, _

Absolutely not. Absolutely fucking not. Somehow, this is just one disaster after the next, and nothing is good enough, and that doesn’t even make sense. He writes for the Mankai blog all the time, so why should this be any different?

Still, writer’s block is writer’s block. And it occurs to Itaru, belatedly, that he might be in serious trouble.

*

“Tsuzuru’s busy.”

Framed by the crack between the door and doorframe of room 102, Masumi looks the same as ever – which is to say, like he’d rather be doing anything than having this conversation. And yet, as tempted as Itaru is to annoy the youngest member of Spring Troupe, he does in fact have bigger fish to fry.

“Real busy, or fake busy?”

“What does that even mean.”

“Like, is he actually busy, or is that just an excuse?”

“He’s writing a script.”

Masumi swings the door open a bit wider, revealing more of the room. Behind him, Tsuzuru is glued to the laptop at his desk; Itaru can hear him muttering under his breath as he works, even from all the way over here, and over the rapid-fire hammering of the keyboard. And despite the sounds of his troupemates conversing, Mankai’s resident playwright doesn’t even turn in his seat.

“K. Then can you pass on a message for me?”

“No.”

“That’s not very nice of you, Masumi.”

“Good. I don’t want you to think I’m nice.”

“Well, whatever. See you, I guess.”

Masumi shuts the door without even a goodbye. Itaru frowns at it for a long moment, puzzling out his next move.

Fortunately, Tsuzuru isn’t his only option for helping him work out how to approach this blog post. Much less fortunately, Itaru has only one other, and he’s wildly unsure how that conversation is going to go. Steeling himself, he steps back and takes the stairs up to the second floor.

It takes a long time, after he knocks on the door of room 205, for anything to actually happen. He isn’t sure what else he’d expected, since both of its inhabitants live in their own little worlds. But, regardless, the wait does mean he has the space to seriously reconsider his life choices, particularly the ones that have led to voluntarily seeking out Arisugawa Homare for writing advice. It’s not that he doesn’t  _ like _ Homare – far from it, honestly, the guy’s hilarious – but he also wouldn’t exactly be Itaru’s first choice of companion on a Friday night at the end of a stressful week. Especially for help completing a task that may as well be work.

After what feels like the better part of a decade, Homare comes to answer him. He’s clearly in the middle of some project, or has otherwise just finished it: his sleeves are rolled up haphazardly, there are ink stains on his fingers, and his eyes are a little too sharp for him to be entirely in the present. And yet he still manages to look deeply, unironically delighted at the sight of a visitor. “Ah, Itaru. What brings you to my domain today?”

“Hey. Uh, can I come in? It’s not exactly something I want to discuss out here.”

Belatedly, he realises his mistake: he’s promised Homare  _ intrigue. _ Which would be less of a problem if he actually had any intrigue to report, instead of a ridiculous saga that just boils down to him being a) whipped, b) useless at writing, and c) whipped.

Homare waves him inside. The place looks as it always does, which is to say that it looks like one of those sleek, minimalistic houses in architecture magazines fighting a losing battle against the cluttered cottage of a mad recluse, and he picks his way carefully towards the lounge suite. From across the room, Hisoka watches Itaru with all the wariness of one of those stray cats he’s so fond of.

“Please, sit down. Might I be able to interest you in some tea?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m good.”

Itaru sits, and Homare falls into a chair opposite him. Even though they’re about the same height, Homare is all leg, and the artfully-lazy way he sits only enhances that. But when he turns his head and speaks, it’s not his visitor he addresses.

“Hisoka, I’m afraid that I’ll have to ask you to leave. The two of us have important, and most sensitive, business to discuss.”

He decides to take mercy, and inserts himself into the conversation. “Nah, it’s cool. He already knows like half of it, anyway.”

It’s almost imperceptible, but Hisoka’s expression shifts slightly. That makes Homare frown a little, attuned as he must be to his roommate’s mannerisms, but he doesn’t protest. “If you’re certain.”

“Yeah, sure. But, swear on your lives that nothing I say leaves this room?”

Hisoka’s contribution is a firm nod; Homare’s is a declaration of “I solemnly vow it.” Neither of which are particularly encouraging, but Itaru decides to go on anyway.

Before he actually begins, he takes a second to consider how best to talk around the point. Because taruchi’s identity might be an open secret in the dorm, a cat that escaped the bag almost as soon as it was shoved in there, but that doesn’t mean Chikausa wants his to be as well. So it’s time to do one of the things he does best: tell a blatant half-truth, and hope he doesn’t get called on it too badly.

“So. My work as a streamer gets me noticed by all kinds of people, right? That’s just how online fame is. And recently, the owner of this curry blog contacted me, and asked if I wanted to write a guest post about curry, as a collab or something? And I figured, why not. But the thing is, all I write is tweets and emails and the occasional Mankai blog, and I don’t have to think much about any of those. So when I tried to write something else… it fizzled. It didn’t read like anything. Which I guess means I’ve come to ask for writing advice, even though poetry and long-form blog posts are pretty different things. Yeah.”

His words are followed by a pensive silence. It’s Hisoka who speaks first; Homare still seems to be lost in thought, although whether that thought is actually relevant is a whole different question. “…You want us to keep this a secret.”

“Yeah. I figured, since he’s such a curry freak, I could, uh, surprise senpai with it…? Trying to get into his hobbies, and all.”

Hisoka just looks at him. Not even in an accusatory way, although they both know that’s a weak excuse when Chikage is who he is; but it’s nevertheless a look that says  _ I know something is up here, and I’m letting you know that I know, but I’m also letting you know that I don’t care. _ At last, he gets to his feet.

“I’m leaving. If you ask Alice about writing, he’ll get noisy.”

“Artistic genius needs no volume control,” Homare says, in a surprisingly mild tone considering the subject matter. It’s the first thing he’s said since Itaru introduced his problem, which seems like a vaguely ominous sign. “But do as you will.”

Hisoka sees himself out. Homare watches him leave, then turns on Itaru with a genuinely terrifying glint in his eye.

“Well! I don’t intend to beat around the bush, here, so I’ll put you out of your misery and impart the good news. As it happens, Tsuzuru and I coordinate a literary society for precisely this purpose.”

“For the purpose of… bailing out people in over their heads trying to impress their boyfriends?”

“For the purpose of  _ art.  _ We meet every second Sunday – in fact, we’re due to convene this very weekend, in this very room. Why don’t you join us, and we’ll workshop what you have?”

This is also an incredibly stupid idea, but hey, what’s one more at this juncture. Itaru makes a noncommittal hand gesture. “Yeah, okay.”

“Excellent! Bring three printed copies of your work. Sans serif, twelve-point font, double-spaced. And a pen.” Homare holds up a finger, and his eyes narrow as he processes whatever arcane inspiration has just struck him. “No:  _ two _ pens.”

“Do I want to ask – you know what? I don’t. Three copies and two pens it is.”

“Excellent. Most excellent indeed. And, my dear Itaru, allow me to provide you some preliminary advice in the meantime. If you find yourself stuck while writing, unable to even set words down on the page, it’s likely that your true problem lies somewhere else; that you have other mental blocks in the way, which you should perhaps try and tackle first.”

“Uh. Right.”

“You sound as if you doubt me. But even a genius such as myself can suffer from writer’s block sometimes, you know. Why, I remember, back when I was just starting to try and conceptualise my seventh book of poetry, and I had a grasp on the themes I wished to explore, but –” 

“Hey,” he says instead, both because he doesn’t know how long this tangent might go on if left uninterrupted, and because there’s something burning in him that he needs to voice. “Thanks for not telling me this whole blog thing is a stupid idea? I just – I like him a lot, okay.”

Homare leans over and pats his hand consolingly. “Don’t worry. We’ll help you sweep Chikage off his feet.”

“I don’t think he’s the type who can be swept.”

“Well, let’s not make assumptions for lack of trying. The course of true love never did run smooth, after all.”

Itaru almost chokes. “ _True love_ – I mean, I really don’t think I’d put it like that. Or go that far.”

“Merely a turn of phrase, of course. Although I do apologise if it happened to touch a raw nerve.”

“Yeah, you’re fine. I guess being weird about it is on me. And, I mean, I  _ have _ tried to sweep him off his feet. Or I would’ve, but he’d probably have knocked all my attempts back. And then I would’ve had to pretend to not be crushed, and our relationship’d be dead in the water.” Pulling himself up, aware that he’s tilted and rambling, he manages to catch himself before he can spill any more; he feels pathetic enough already, and Homare is looking at him with something almost like pity. “But I don’t want to talk about that, okay? So I’ll say it again: thanks for not laughing at me, and thanks for helping.”

“It’s no problem at all. Well, then, if that’s all concluded, I’ll be seeing you at our meeting on Sunday.”

It seems incredibly likely that Itaru will be seeing him before then as well, seeing as they live together and share meals, but he’s not the type to take the wind out of somebody’s sails when they’ve agreed to help him. He stands and stretches, more than ready to leave and get back to things. “Yep, yep. See you then, sensei.”

*

Despite the pair of them sharing a room, and both being night owls, their schedules somehow never seem to actually line up. Chikage’s a chronically early riser, whose side of the bed is barely even warm when Itaru’s weekday alarm goes off. And they go to bed at slightly different hours, too, always just missing each other. Equally volatile, but somehow never the same  _ kind _ of volatile. It’s always Chikage turning in before Itaru’s finished catching up on all his games; or else it’s Itaru, curled up alone in his boyfriend’s bed, when he can’t wait for him any longer, and stirring into half-wakefulness hours later whenever he returns.

But on weekends, when Itaru can curtail his urge to game the whole night, and be coaxed into bed at a reasonable hour – they get to wake up together. And even better are the days when somehow, he wakes up first; when he gets to catch Chikage sleeping.

As it turns out, today is one of those lucky days. He can tell by the slow, level breathing at his back, by the arm slung loosely over his waist. When he turns his head, trying to look over his shoulder without shifting too much, he manages to steal a glimpse of the curve of closed eyelids.

He contemplates, as he always does in this situation, going back to sleep. But as usual, he dismisses that idea; because Chikage has an uncanny ability to wake up no more than ten minutes after Itaru does, operating on some weirdly specific sixth sense, and it’s been a long enough week that he doesn’t want to waste any of their time together today.

So he waits, warm and comfortable. And, soon enough, he feels the mattress dip a little as his boyfriend stirs. His next clue is the arm around his waist tightening, followed by the sound of quiet shuffling, and the warmth of skin against his back. Itaru has to bite down on his tender, embarrassing smile. Because he likes nearly every Chikage, but this one – just after waking up, unguarded, without the usual learned self-consciousness about his yearning for affection – might be his favourite. Then Chikage mouths at the back of his neck, lips hot against bare skin, and Itaru can’t quite hide his shiver.

He’d thought sleeping naked with someone would be kind of gross and sweaty, even in the winter. And, well, turns out it  _ is _ kind of gross and sweaty. But it also turns out he doesn’t actually mind that much, not when the payoff is getting to be like this, pressed impossibly close together. Itaru turns onto his other side, the better to see him, and their legs knock together as he does. Chikage’s eyes are soft with sleep, and fond with habit. “Good morning.”

“Hey, senpai.”

“Sleep well?”

“Well enough. Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“You never do.” Chikage shifts to face him more comfortably. “Do I get a good-morning kiss?”

“You know, you don’t have to ask every time. Like I’m gonna say no.”

“I like asking.”

“Sure, sure.”

He scoots a little closer. It’s a brief kiss; there, and gone again. Chikage’s eyes linger on him, afterwards, unreadable except for the hunger to go on looking, and Itaru can’t quite keep it in.

“Lo –”

_ ve you. _ Appalled at himself, he snaps his mouth shut, and buries his embarrassment by tucking his face into Chikage’s neck.

“Hm?”

“Nothing. Kiss me again.”

“Demanding, aren’t you.”

“I’m not demanding anything you wouldn’t have given anyway.”

“Well. That’s probably true.”

Chikage swings a leg over his hip, rolls him onto his back, and Itaru gladly follows his lead. That makes the loft bed creak a little dangerously, but it’s difficult to care about that when he’s quickly pulled into another kiss. The feel of Chikage’s body against his, the weight and the heat of him, is starting to become pleasantly familiar. And this is the  _ other _ nice thing about weekend mornings, besides getting to sleep in. Because Itaru knows he’s handsome – has, in fact, deliberately cultivated his appearance to mask the unfortunate fact of his personality – but it’s one thing to know that, and quite another to feel so relentlessly  _ wanted. _

And it’s not just the makeout tipping him off about that, either. Chikage’s already hard, cock nudging against him; and while, realistically speaking, it’s probably just morning wood, Itaru isn’t above letting himself interpret that as a victory.

Fuzzily, he realises that his hands are still splayed on the mattress, which is a complete waste. So he settles one hand in the soft hair at the base of Chikage’s skull, and with the other – fuck it. He goes for Chikage’s ass. And he’s not the only one who appreciates that; grabbing it earns him an eager groan, and a slow, lazy grind down.

Chikage’s voice is low in his ear, verging on breathless. “Feel free to do that again.”

He thinks about it. There’s a whole lot of cognitive dissonance between the regular Chikage, who seems to delight in constantly baiting him, and the Chikage he’s been sleeping with for months, who’s astoundingly vocal about what he likes. If they weren’t both so wilful and self-indulgent, it’d be strange to think they’re the same person.

But, because Itaru also knows what  _ he _ likes, and because he’s been given a rare chance to turn the tables in their usual dynamic, he may as well be as obnoxious as he can get away with. “Do what again, senpai?”

“You know what.”

“I’m not sure I do?”

“You’re bold today. But – come on and touch me, Chigasaki. I want you.”

Okay, slight backfire: he hadn’t accounted for the fact that hearing his boyfriend straightforwardly ask to be touched fries his entire brain. But Itaru hasn’t entirely lost the upper hand yet. His fingers skim inwards, and trace the cleft of Chikage’s ass.

The response that gets is immediate: Chikage shifts his legs further apart, and drops his head against Itaru’s shoulder. His breathing goes ragged. And when Itaru, emboldened, ghosts a finger over his entrance, the shudder that coaxes out of him is obscene.

“If you wanted to fuck me, you should have said something.”

“I mean.  _ Do  _ you want me to fuck you?”

Too late, he realises that’s probably crossed the line from sexy deflection to actual uncertainty, mostly because his tone was all wrong. It’s too easy for him to get ahead of himself when he’s turned on, his dick working faster than his brain.

But Chikage seems to really think about it, pulling himself into a half-sit, so maybe he hasn’t completely screwed this up. In the meantime, Itaru busies himself with the losing battle of not thinking about getting to be inside Chikage again.

“…Not today. I feel like something else.”

He ducks his head, and starts on Itaru’s neck. Light kisses, at first, littered along all the points where his pulse beats strongest, and then adding the barest edge of teeth. Then Chikage bites down a little too sharply, and Itaru shoves at him. “Hey. Behave. You better not leave any marks when we have work tomorrow.”

“Mmm. So you’d let me mark you if we didn’t?”

“No dice, senpai. It’s kinda tacky, you know, for a grown man to go around with a bitten-up neck.” And then, because he does try to be honest about what turns him on, he adds: “But somewhere else, where people can’t see, would probably be fine.”

“Well, then.”

Chikage ducks his head, sinks his teeth into the skin over his collarbone, sucks  _ hard. _ And Itaru just about wails. He manages to clap a hand over his mouth just in time, but it’s a close thing. Dangerously so.

“Come on, Chigasaki. You won’t let me hear you?”

“The walls –”

“It’s Sunday. Nobody’s in their rooms except us.”

That’s maybe the least true thing Itaru’s ever heard him say – which is a pretty high bar to clear after how long they’ve known each other, to say nothing of how long they’ve been dating (three months and about three weeks, not like he’s counting, or that it matters their anniversary is on August seventeenth). But then Chikage drags his tongue over Itaru’s collarbone, lingering on the indents left by his teeth. And it’s suddenly a lot harder to care about that, or to stay quiet.

“You,” he grits out, “are  _ really bad _ at behaving, senpai.”

“Can you blame me for wanting to make my favourite junior squirm?”

“Oh, good. I’d hate to think you do this with all your juniors.”

“Would it make you jealous if I did?”

“What kind of question is that? Yeah, of course I’d be jealous, seeing as you’re my  _ boyfriend._”

There’s a strange, loaded silence, then, and it’s not an unfamiliar one. Not in general, and not in the context of their relationship. But it’s no more comforting for its familiarity; for the fact he knows it, or the way it makes his stomach tie itself in practiced knots.

Back when Itaru had been in seventh grade, his family had gone on a trip deep into the countryside, over a long weekend in summer break. He doesn’t remember much of the specifics, the way he doesn’t remember most of his childhood. But he remembers – getting permission from his parents, and going out late one evening to look at the stars. It had been a still August night, probably the same as any other out there, miles away from civilisation. No wind, no animals, no traffic, and no noise from the cabin where his family was. And what he had found, alone under constellations he couldn’t name, was an unblemished, unnatural silence. Not the absence of sound, but something deeper. An absence so deep that it became a nullification, like the concept of sound had never existed at all, and never would. A perfect soundlessness.

And that’s the same silence, now, which curls in the bed between them; an uninvited third.

Chikage breaks it first, exhaling against his skin with breath that’s as much heat as sound. His head is nearly level with Itaru’s heart, one hand braced on the sheets by his hip, and the other on the arc of the bottom of his ribcage; his thumb skims the line where bone gives way to flesh, over lungs clogged by too many unspoken words. “Just making a joke, although I’ll admit it was in bad taste. Can I eat you out?”

They make eye contact, still a little strange and tense. Chikage always takes his glasses off to sleep, and leaves them off during sex; and Itaru’s yet to work out if that means they’re for show, and wholly a vanity thing, or just for long-distance vision. Or, for that matter, if his eyesight up close is actually terrible, and he takes his glasses off so he doesn’t have to look at his partner.

“Hey,” Itaru says, suddenly reticent, a raw nerve with his pulse too close to the surface of his skin. “You can see me, right?”

“What brought that on?”

“I… look, it’s nothing, okay? Forget it.”

“Chigasaki, I –”

“I promise I’m just being dumb. Drop it, and touch me?”

Itaru throws an arm over his face, done with this embarrassing moment of vulnerability, and cheeks too bright with warmth in this darkened room. But Chikage lingers, still. His fingers make their way up along the contours of Itaru’s chest until they reach his breastbone – and then up, and up, and up. He takes Itaru’s arm and peels it away, then presses it against the mattress. For a long moment, Itaru can’t tell if he’s going to pin his wrist, or take his hand, and he can’t even tell which of those concepts is making his heart hammer.

But it seems like Chikage doesn’t quite know either, unusually lost in thought and unusually transparent about it. He’s just staring at the way their hands meet, at the lines his fingers cut against the underside of Itaru’s wrist, against the soft skin, against the veins and tendons and pulse and bones there. His nails are perfect white crescents, like new moons.

To dispel the tension, whatever kind of tension it actually is, Itaru moves his fingers in a little wave. “Hey.”

That does seem to work, at least. The motion shakes Chikage out of it, and he lets go of Itaru’s hand. It’s just a hair too quick to be natural, like he’s been burned, or caught doing something he’s not supposed to. “Sorry. I was thinking about how to answer that, and I ended up getting lost along the way. Of course I can see you.”

“Oh.”

“Just  _ oh_?”

“Well, I mean, it was a dumb question. Of course it was gonna get a dumb answer, you know?”

“Actually, I think it was a fair question, under the circumstances.” He tips his head, and the shadow of his fringe falls around his eyes. “And you?”

“And me what?”

“Can you see me, as well?”

Itaru has the sinking feeling that he doesn’t know what this conversation is supposed to be about anymore. If, indeed, he had known in the first place. “Yeah. Or I’m pretty sure I can, anyway.”

“Good. In that case, don’t look away from me.”

That punches an awful laugh out of him, despite the importance of the moment, and he’s quickly met with raised eyebrows. “My bad. It’s just, you sound like you’re – like you’re about to do a coin trick, or something. And you have to make sure I’m paying enough attention to be impressed at the end.”

“I never pretended to be good at this, Chigasaki.”

“That’s fair. Me neither, but we knew that going in.”

“So,” Chikage says, “getting back to the topic at hand. You never answered my question.”

Itaru has to briefly run back through their entire conversation, but just draws a colossal blank. “Which one?”

“ _Can _ I eat you out?”

“Well, yeah.”

“That sounded a little noncommittal.”

“No, it didn’t. You just want to hear me say it.”

“You know, if you don’t want to –”

“You really need to stop using the same tricks on me, senpai.”

“Not as long as the old ones still work.”

“You’re just being a nuisance,” he says, “but fine. Then – please eat me out, senpai.”

Chikage takes a while to get there, fond as he is of drawing things out for his own amusement, but he does get there. And, after Itaru’s come with his boyfriend’s hand on his dick and tongue in his ass, feigned offense at subsequent attempts to kiss him, and returned the favour with a handjob that’s more enthusiasm than finesse but still makes Chikage shake silently apart, they lay together again. On their sides, skin against skin where arms meet waists and calves touch calves. Chikage’s usually neat hair is tousled, fringe completely askew, and Itaru has to fight the urge to ruffle it even more.

Are things allowed to be this… nice? Is he really allowed to have a stable job, a warm home full of people he loves, two different hobbies he’s good at and serious about,  _ and _ a boyfriend he really likes who’s pretty good to him? Because he definitely hasn’t stacked up that much good karma in the last twenty-fiveish years. Not even close, and he kind of wonders where the catch is.

_ The catch, _ part of his brain sharply reminds him,  _ is that it’s been nearly four months and you still don’t know if he loves you. Or if loving you has even crossed his mind. _

“Hey,” he says aloud, biting down his second  _ love you _ of the morning with more force than the first. “Like you.”

Chikage’s soft snort is warm in the space between them. “Like you, too.”

“So… we’re good?”

“We’re ‘good’.”

“Yeah, feel free to make that sound less sincere.”

“I did mean it, though. And, to be honest, I wanted to ask you the same thing.”

That’s such a strange, uncharacteristic concession of vulnerability that Itaru nearly cracks his neck trying to make eye contact. “You did?”

“Is that so surprising?”

“To hear you admit to being insecure about something? Well, yeah. I kinda thought that only happened to us mere mortals.”

“Don’t be obnoxious. Not after you didn’t want to have lunch together.”

“Huh?”

“When I came by your cubicle on Thursday to invite you to lunch, you didn’t want to do that. And, since you didn’t provide any real reason, and since you’d told me beforehand that you aren’t particularly busy with any of your game events, I assumed you said no for… reasons relating to me.”

“Oh, I knew what you meant, I think I was just surprised to hear it stuck. But no, it was nothing like that. There was just something I had to take care of, and lunch was the only timeslot I had to do it. I promise I haven’t gone off you or anything.”

Chikage’s expression settles. His fingers skim a slow circle on the narrowest part of Itaru’s waist, a gesture that Itaru’s learned exists mostly to soothe himself. “Well. All right, then.”

“Yeah. Cool.”

“But, now we’ve covered why I asked that question: why did  _ you  _ ask?”

“Hmm. No real reason, I guess? Force of habit, or still not feeling like this is real, or wondering when you’re gonna call it off. You know.”

“I’m not going to call it off. Unless you’d prefer that I do.”

“No?? I definitely don’t want that. You haven’t done anything to put me off, and we’re usually okay at talking about problems when they come up, so. Plus, I –”  _ Love you_; his third of the morning, a trifecta that marks the boundary line of his shame. Itaru makes himself strike on regardless. “I’m still into you, and I still want this, and I think being together is definitely mostly really good for me. For both of us, even. And… that was a lot of words to say no, huh.”

“But it  _ is  _ a no?”

“It’s absolutely a no, senpai. End of story.”

“I appreciate it. You know, you’re strangely honest about these things.”

“Only cause I’m bad at defending myself against you.”

“That’s true. But, if all that’s sorted, there’s something else I want to ask.” Chikage props himself up on an elbow, regards him with the usual impish curiosity. “How’s the guest post coming along?”

And there, of course, is the other catch. A less significant one, but far more immediate; and it occurs to Itaru that it is, in fact, Sunday, which means he has an appointment to keep.

“Good!” he says. “Yeah. Really, really,  _ good._”

*

After that, he makes his excuses and gets up and showers and cleans his teeth and dresses and scuttles on up to the second floor. Relationships, as Itaru’s fast learning, are weird and paradoxical things. Why else would he have passed up on spending a lazy Sunday in bed with his boyfriend, in favour of attending a meeting of the Mankai Writers Club, or whatever it is they call themselves, so he can nail this blog post and (hopefully) make Chikage happy further down the track?

Perhaps, he reflects as he tests the door to room 205 and finds it unlocked, this is what adulthood means. Delaying your gratification, and facing your problems in the long-term. A hallmark of maturity.

“Welcome, dear visitor… to the atelier of the Mankai Literary Society!”

Or not.

As if to remind him that he is, in fact, not being mature about this at all, he’s immediately greeted by Homare’s booming voice. Mankai Company’s self-declared foremost wordsmith holds court from a large chair he’s pulled up to the central table, and looks to be wearing three turtlenecks at once. He stands when Itaru walks in, and gestures him grandly inside.

“Welcome, welcome. Might I be able to fetch you anything?”

“Still not really a tea guy, thanks. But I’ll take soda, if you have any.”

“I have soda  _ water_?”

“Yeah, no. I’m good.”

“Ah, but it would be remiss of me as a host to leave you thirsty! I suppose I’ll go and see if there’s any soda in the kitchen.”

He strides out of the room, a man on a mission. In his absence, Itaru takes a seat on the couch, at the other end from Homare’s other visitor. Tsuzuru looks a bit… post-literary, still pale from his writing marathon and nursing an enormous cup of coffee, but at least he’s alive. He offers a nod and a wave, then scoots a bit closer.

“You know,” he says in an undertone, “I wasn’t sure you’d actually come today.”

“Ouch.”

“I guess I shouldn’t have doubted you, though. You always seem pretty serious about Chikage.”

While Itaru is, objectively, pretty serious about Chikage, it kind of ruffles his feathers to hear someone else say it. Maybe because that sounds so one-sided, or because he has no clue if Chikage’s equally serious about him. But he makes himself tamp down that unproductive irritation. “You know the details?”

“Homare told me, more or less. He said something about how you’d been asked to write a piece about curry as part of a collab, and wanted to surprise Chikage by producing something solid. To prove that you can like what he likes.”

“Yeah, that’s about it.”

“So… you have nothing to add? Nothing else to say for yourself?”

“You know, if you’re fishing for something, you may as well come out and say it.”

“I’m not fishing, Itaru. But you do know this is a really strange and ridiculous way of trying to do something for him, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, “that one kind of occurred to me already.”

“Then why go to these lengths? I know you can get caught up overthinking sometimes, but this is taking that to a whole new level.”

“Because senpai isn’t the type who likes standard romantic gestures. Not making them, and not receiving them, either. It’s like he doesn’t even know that language exists. So, because he’s so weird and unromantic, only weird and unromantic things get through to him. Like blog posts about curry, or driving him home on nights he works overtime.”

That strikes him as a reasonable way of framing the problem, and one which conveniently avoids the embarrassing crux of why he’s actually putting himself through this, but Tsuzuru just… stares at him. Itaru manages not to reflexively hunch into himself, although it’s a narrow thing. “What.”

Tsuzuru starts to frame an answer, but he’s saved from the inevitable criticism by their host’s triumphant return. Homare swans in and hands him a can of… something, which turns out to be root beer. So, nothing at all like the fruity soda he was craving – and also, he’s not even sure who this belongs to, only that they’re going to be pissed when they discover it’s gone from the fridge. But he’s also not going to complain, not when trading it for something better is just going to mean wasting even more of his time at this meeting. Instead, he nudges it delicately away from himself, and looks to the members of the Mankai Literary Whatever.

“K. So. How do you normally kick these things off?”

“Like so.” Homare stands, surveys the table, and clears his throat with altogether too much ceremony. “Now that we’ve all gathered, I hereby call this meeting of the Mankai Literary Society to order. Tsuzuru, prepare to take minutes.”

Tsuzuru nearly sprays the sip of coffee he’s just taken across the table. “I keep telling you, we aren’t in that kind of meeting!”

“Perhaps we could be, if you weren’t always dreaming so small.”

“The minutes don’t matter,” Itaru cuts in, because he knows where this is going if he doesn’t, and that place is  _ nowhere fast. _ “Can we just start?”

Homare pouts a little, but he does keep going. “Well, regardless, I’m pleased to announce that we have a very special guest in attendance today. Why don’t you introduce yourself, and tell us why you’ve sought out our august society?”

Tsuzuru looks too exhausted to protest any of that. But Itaru knows from experience how to deal with chuunibyou, even chuunibyou who are published authors, so he swoops in quickly.

“My name’s Itaru. And I’m here because I’m trying to workshop… a blog post, I guess. Cause when I sat down to draft it, I realised I didn’t really know anything about how to approach it? I only ever write emails, and tweets, and I guess short snippets for the Mankai blog, and it kinda shows.”

“Mmmmm.” Homare steeples his fingers, and regards his new apprentice over the top of them. “I see. Then did you bring a draft, as I requested of you when we last met?”

“Yeah, uh. I didn’t actually get that far? Did bring the pens, though.”

To underline his point, he slips them out of his pocket and sets them on the table as significantly as he can. But now that he looks at them properly, they’re kind of cheap; plus one doesn’t have a lid, and the other’s nearly out of ink, which isn’t that surprising when he never does any work on paper. But when he glances back to Homare, he finds the poet frowning.

“I respect your verve, Itaru, but these pens are useless without drafts to exercise them upon. Do you have anything real to show for today, then?”

“Hey,” he says, kind of stung by this blatant disrespect. “For what it’s worth, I do have a title.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I was thinking something like…  _ Guest Post._”

Tsuzuru looks at Homare. Homare looks at Tsuzuru. Itaru experiences a moment of pure terror about the fact they’re apparently on the same wavelength.

“The issue, my dear boy,” Homare says at last, as if he’s talking to a particularly dense pupil and not a grown man, “is that you lack inspiration. Your lack of a title speaks to a larger lack of ideas, if not being completely out of touch with your entire psyche. Why, I often refuse to begin work on a poem if I haven’t already got a title!”

“Yeah, no,” says Tsuzuru, setting his coffee down, “don’t listen to him. Everyone works in their own way, and you definitely don’t need to start with a title. I usually go through a lot of different ones as I make progress on a script, anyhow.” And then, just when Itaru’s about to thank him for being the voice of reason here, he keeps going. “But I do think Homare has a point. If you have ideas, but you can’t get them down, that usually means you don’t  _ really _ have ideas. Or… it means you have thoughts, but they aren’t fully fledged ideas yet.”

But that isn’t fair either. He might have mostly sat on his ass about this all week, but he hasn’t  _ entirely  _ sat on his ass about this all week. “No, look, I definitely know what I want to say. It’s just, I couldn’t get anywhere when I sat down to write it. Everything I tried felt either way too impersonal, or way too far in the other direction.”

“Your problem,” Homare declares, “is that you’re being far too fastidious.”

“I,” Itaru says. “Am too fastidious.”

“Yes! You’re completely overthinking art; art, which most eludes us when we most voraciously give chase to it, and which defies thought in favour of feeling. Your first lesson for today, my friend, is that the best way to pursue art sometimes is, paradoxically, not to pursue it at all. To let your project steep slowly, percolating into your mind. To metaphorically turn your back on it, and allow inspiration, fickle creature that it is, to approach without fear of your scrutiny.”

“Look, it’s just a blog post. I don’t really know if you can call that art.”

“And why not? It may merely be… _creative nonfiction, _ but if it doesn’t qualify as art, that nevertheless falls upon the potter rather than the clay he works with. It’s a poor craftsman indeed who blames his tools”

“Homare,” Tsuzuru cuts in. “I really don’t know if this is helping.”

“Tsuzuru, speaking as the more experienced creative here, and your senior in the ways of –”

“And Itaru. Let us know when you’ve developed your ideas and actually written something, and we can meet again. Now that I’m done with scriptwriting, and finished most of my finals, I should be free whenever you’re ready.” His troupemate offers him a mostly encouraging smile. “So, even if this is still ridiculous, you can take your time about it.”

Homare, seemingly recovered from being interrupted, sits forward in his chair. “It’s true that the Mankai Literary Society convenes on a strict schedule… but it also seems reasonable to bend that schedule to help a friend in need. I concur.”

Tsuzuru frowns. “…I thought it’d been decided we were the literary  _ club_?”

“ _Club _ is so juvenile. We aren’t a group of schoolchildren meeting after class to fulfil our extracurricular requirements, but an adult meeting of the minds. So, as the founder of the Mankai Literary Society, and its most accomplished and widely-published member, I made an executive decision and overruled you.”

“But you wouldn’t even have a Literary Society without me. It’d just be you on your own.”

“ _Anyway,_ ” Itaru says, because he has better things to do on his day off than listen to Tsuzuru play straight-man to another Mankai weirdo. “That sounds like a better idea. I’ll ping you guys once I get something down, then.” 

“Yeah, do that. But I hope we haven’t discouraged you too much.”

“Well. Only kinda.”

Tsuzuru’s mouth twists in thought. “Sorry. But I really do think there’s a curry blog only you can write, Itaru. And I think that… remember when I was struggling to finish Clockwork Heartbeat, and you told me it was okay to write for my own self-satisfaction? This curry review is inherently a selfish thing, too. So you may as well lean into it, and write something that’s going to reflect who you are.”

“Yeah,” he says, “that makes sense, actually. Thanks.”

The others nod, and he takes the chance to excuse himself. It feels odd to emerge into the outside world, into a place that’s much less bizarre, but he’s not complaining.

He’d expected meeting with the Mankai Literary Society-Club to be a complete waste of time, and it’s a pleasant surprise to find that it wasn’t. At the very least, he knows what his problem is now, even if he still doesn’t quite know how to break it down and then tackle it. As much as Homare’s suggestion to ignore this project until inspiration strikes appeals to him, he’d probably feel bad acting on that. And since, at this point, he’s stress-backread just about every Chikausa post ever made, he’s pretty much out of other resources to consult.

Well. He’ll probably be fine.

*

Itaru gets the email informing him of Chikausa’s latest post the next day, in the middle of a block of time he’d set aside for grinding a mobage event. As much as he’s tried to cure himself of the habit of checking his notifications during a game, it’s a hard thing to actually kick, especially when he’s kind of restless and distracted, and every loading screen feels longer than usual.

Seeing the notification kind of does something embarrassing to his heart, to be honest. Because he  _ misses _ Chikage, as stupid as that is, and as stupid as it makes him feel to admit; even though they live together, and see each other all the time. Because Chikage’s been working late nights recently, crunching out the last of their company’s business before winter holidays, and Itaru’s been busy as well, and their Boyfriend Hour has kind of fallen by the wayside. And even though it’s just that time of year, and not really anybody’s fault, it sucks anyway.

So, really, this email feels like an important sign of life. If Chikage’s well enough to be publishing posts about curry, he’s probably doing okay.

His thumb slips when he tries to tap on his email app, though, fatigued from grinding the same two event quests for the last who-even-knows how long. So he accidentally lands on LIME instead, and it opens to his most recent messages.

>[Itaru Chigasaki]: tried to think about this stupid post   
>[Itaru Chigasaki]: again   
>[Itaru Chigasaki]: got stuck   
>[Itaru Chigasaki]: again   
>[Itaru Chigasaki]: send help lmaooooo   
>[Tsuzuru]: If you’re really that blocked, maybe try and take a break? Getting some fresh air usually helps me.   
>[Alice]: An excellent idea, Tsuzuru! In addition, I’d suggest going people-watching, if you can find an appropriate place to do so. I find that just watching other humans exist, living tiny lives all their own, to be an ever-fruitful, ever-flowing wellspring of poetic inspira… [show full message]

Oh, he didn’t realise their replies had come in yet. And while they clearly both mean well, neither of those suggestions is exactly useful. Taking a break is just likely to make him feel worse when he’s already so far behind; and this post is supposed to be about  _ curry, _ not people.

Still, a tiny break can’t hurt. So he’ll go read Chikage’s new post, like he was intending to, and then reassess where he’s at.

Judging from the title and opening paragraph, it seems to be a review of a restaurant in the neighbourhood around their office. And it’s all too easy to imagine Chikage slinking in on his own late at night, rewarding himself after working overtime, or else fighting his way through the lunch crowd, forced to share a table with another hungry curry fan. The post itself seems a bit shorter than the usual fare, but it’s no less intense a shot of Chikausa for that. It has the same blunt yet articulate voice, a harshness that clearly comes from a place of deep investment, which does nothing to temper the genuine enthusiasm for the subject matter.

Fuck. Now he just misses Chikage more. It’s almost a reflex to read the post in his voice, imagine how his tone would curl with sarcasm around particular phrases, how he’d talk with perfect confidence about the kind of culinary nuances most people wouldn’t care about, how he’d get that tiny light in his eyes just after taking the first bite of a perfect curry – 

Itaru nearly drops his phone on his face. That’s  _ it. _

In all his backreading of the Chikausa archive, all his wading through the blog’s comment section, all his increasingly desperate skims of the Curryiously Spicy Wiki, it hadn’t really occurred to him that the blog’s charm point is how clearly it reflects the man behind it. How sharply and authentically, despite the blogger’s obfuscation of the details of his identity, it paints a portrait of Chikage.

So, all Itaru has to do is work out how to capture himself in his writing the same way. Because, as Tsuzuru had said, there’s a curry post only he can write. One that’s all him.

And that post probably starts with laying out why he had gone back to Some Like It Hot, and why the dorm’s resident curry disliker had agreed to go with him. In the hope of reaching each other; and, by extension, Chikage. In the hope that eating together – or that taking some clear action, spelling out intention through action – might somehow make those relationships fall into place.

Shit. Fuck. Maybe he’s really cracked this one. So he stuffs his phone into his pocket, steps into his least labour-intensive pair of shoes, and goes hunting. For once, farming materials can  _ wait. _

At least Hisoka isn’t hard to find. Despite the cold, he’s napping on a bench in the courtyard, curled up in his jacket; some benevolent passerby has covered him with a blanket, most likely a member of Winter Troupe. He stirs awake as Itaru approaches, strangely wary, and looks at him like he already knows what this is about.

“Hey,” Itaru says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “Mind if I ask you some questions?”

*

Tsuzuru finishes reading the draft first; Itaru can tell by the way he sets it neatly on the table, and folds his hands. Homare’s still poring over his own copy, brow furrowed in thought and pen bouncing between his fingers as he contemplates, even though his eyes aren’t moving.

Well, good that it’s apparently readable at least, but Itaru feels like he’s been holding his breath for fifty years. He’d convened this meeting on incredibly short notice – he had messaged the members of Mankai Authors Anonymous almost as soon as he’d sent his finished draft to one of the dorm’s printers – and he had felt mostly okay about what he’d managed to put together. But now, actually sitting here, with the restless tapping of his foot the only sound in room 205, he’s starting to second-guess himself. And then third-guess, fourth-guess, and fifth-guess.

“Okay,” he says, mostly to say something. “Let’s hear the damage report. How is it? I mean, this one’s just a practice run, so it’s fine if it’s bad, I guess – ”

Two pairs of eyes snap to him at once. But it’s Homare who responds, taking the lid off his pen with all the ominous relish of an RPG’s final boss unsheathing his sword during a pre-fight cutscene.

“Not bad at all. Still somewhat unpolished, yes, and clearly the work of someone who doesn’t write often, but I think both those aspects work in its favour. The lack of artifice and the straightforward prose better allow your sincerity to shine through.”

“It’s true. For example, a lot of people tend to over-write when they’re just starting out? They’ll use too many adjectives, or describe everything in too much detail, or fall back on cliches. But you don’t really do any of those things. So congratulations on avoiding a lot of rookie mistakes, I guess.” Tsuzuru flicks through his version, stopping when he reaches one of the scribbly notes he’s looking for. “Although, what I really like about this is that it’s about you, and it’s about curry, but it’s also about Hisoka. You shifted focus from the curry to the person you’re sharing the curry with… and drew a parallel between both food and writing bringing people together.”

Homare latches onto that train of thought. “Yes! At its heart, this piece isn’t about your meal at all. Instead, it’s about someone you want to get to know better, but aren’t certain how to approach. So all you can do is invite him to dinner, and hope that represents a meaningful brick in the bridge you’re trying to build to span the gap between you.”

“Well,” Itaru says, suddenly skittish from all the praise. “Not in so many words, I guess.”

“And, furthermore, the confessional nature of this piece speaks to the fact you’ve managed to arrive at the ultimate truth: that all art is about humanity.”

“Yeah, I appreciate the teachable moment and all, but couldn’t you have just told me that a week ago?”

“And robbed you of the journey?” But Homare, clearly realising that answer isn’t going to fly, corrects himself. “Well, even if I  _ had _ volunteered as much – and I did suggest you go people-watching, mind you, which would have led you to that conclusion regardless – you wouldn’t have believed me.”

“Fair.”

Tsuzuru jumps in again. “There was one paragraph in particular that stuck out to me, actually – oh, here it is.  _ I knew he didn’t like curry when I asked him to come with, and I didn’t know if the promise of dessert was why he had accepted. But we had ended up here anyway, two people who weren’t quite friends in a restaurant meant for couples, and neither of us was prepared to leave. _ The way you set up the complexity of your relationship is interesting, and I think if you can draw that out a bit more, it’ll turn out really well.”

“Quite so! In complete honesty, though, while I’ve led with praise for your work, the situation isn’t all roses. I don’t want to be too harsh on you, since you’re still a newly minted novice in the ways of writing, but… I have some suggestions for how to best polish this, if you’d be open to hearing them.”

Itaru deliberates. On one hand, he’s sick of looking at this damn post, and the idea of having to put in  _ more _ work on something that won’t even get published is exhausting. But on the other, he should probably gather all the advice he can before starting work on the real thing. “Yeah, okay.”

“I think your description of the setting – that is, the restaurant itself – was comparatively weak. Ideally, you want to convey the strongest possible sense of atmosphere to your readers; to make them feel as if they, themselves, are tucked in a booth at Some Like It Hot, squinting in the dim light with curry on their palate. I’m no particular expert on food writing, but I’d nevertheless suggest that you let both the dishes and mise-en-scene bleed through far more.”

“Yeah, okay, focus on setting the scene. I can do that. Anything else?”

“Oh, certainly.” Homare leans forward, eyes glinting. “Take up your pen, Itaru. I suggest that you make notes.”

*

Itaru wakes with a start, jerking awake from some hazy dream. The first thing that occurs to him is that he’s somewhere unfamiliar; or at least, not in his bed. He’s at the wrong angle, leaned forward and spine stiff and head pillowed on his arms, and his mind strains uselessly to shake off the fog of sleep. And it takes far too long a moment for him to drag himself into full consciousness, trying to figure out where he is and what he’d been doing and what kind of distraction had stirred him.

The first clue hits when he peels his face off what he realises is his keyboard, and then everything clicks into place at once. He’d been barricaded in his room, trying to incorporate the suggestions he’d been given during a final pass on his practice curry review, and then – right, he must have fallen asleep. He  _ has _ been pushing himself pretty hard lately, after all, so it’s not that surprising to find that his body had failed him.

He inspects the damage. As a result of crashing at his PC, and on one key in particular, his document’s been reduced to pages and pages of the same letter. Which he can’t even really complain about, because “aaaaaaaaaaaa” is a pretty accurate summary of how he feels right now.

And slowly, he realises what must have woken him: Chikage’s standing in the doorway, suit jacket folded over his arm, toeing off his shoes. Itaru clears his dry throat.

“Senpai. I thought you were working overtime?”

It’s not really a question. He knows for a fact that his roommate was meant to stay behind today, which is why he’d felt safe enough to work on his draft in the first place. And, while Chikage’s aggressively good at his job, it still feels like he’s gotten back too quickly.

“I was. It’s already ten o’clock.”

“…Ten at  _ night?_”

“Ten at night.”

The clock on Itaru’s desktop says it’s actually 9:53, but he can excuse the rounding. What’s harder to excuse is that he’s hungry, sore from sleeping at a stupid angle, down a good chunk of his evening, and has apparently spent four hours drooling on his custom mechanical keyboard. He plucks a tissue from the box on his desk and scrubs uselessly at the worst of the marks; but there’s something more important he has to take care of, before he makes himself deal with that.

“Well, whatever. Welcome back.”

“...I’m home.”

Damn, it’s good to see him though. Itaru’s been so busy with work, gaming, streaming, practice, and running around trying to whip this damn blog post into shape that it feels like forever since they’ve been alone together. Even watching him go through his usual post-work routine feels like balm on an ache he’s only just become aware of; familiar, and nice, and important enough that he can’t risk jeopardising it by forcing a conversation about feelings.

Or at least, it feels that way, right up until Chikage turns to him and asks, “What are you working on?”

Theoretically, he could lie his way out of this one. Except that his brain’s still a little foggy from sleep, and that Chikage’s a better liar than him, and also that – this late into the piece, with the man he’s probably, definitely in love with standing in front of him, for what feels like the first time in aeons, he doesn’t feel like lying.

“It’s a practice blog post about curry. I’m never gonna publish it, and I still haven’t even worked out which restaurant I review for the real thing, but yeah. It only makes sense to prepare before taking on an important task, right?”

“…Is that why I’ve barely seen you since the weekend?”

“Something like that.”

“Well. You might have told me as much, Chigasaki. I thought something was seriously wrong.”

And Itaru could just let things be at that. He could accept this return to an unsteady equilibrium, kick down his uncertainties, sink his boot into the most honest part of himself; the part which has almost everything, and still can’t be happy. The part that just wants to know if he’s loved. But he makes himself take a deep breath, even though it’s ragged at the edges. “Actually. To be honest, something might be wrong.”

Chikage freezes. Even though he’s on the sofa, half-reading something on his phone, it’s obvious from the way his posture seems to go rigid. Then he very deliberately turns his phone off and puts it on the table. And his eyes settle heavily on Itaru, inviting him to speak.

“Hey, senpai. How do you feel about me?”

“I thought you knew. We talked about this less than a week ago.”

“No, we didn’t. Because  _ not going off someone _ and having serious feelings for them aren’t the same thing. Also, even though we had that conversation, you still get weird and quiet when I call you my boyfriend. Is that… not what we are? Cause if that’s not what we are –”

“No, we’re on the same page. And if I’ve been reticent about it, or haven’t made it completely clear, that’s on me. Because I’ve had partners before, but very few boyfriends.” 

“Hey,” Itaru says, because he’s starting to have an important suspicion about this. “Very few, like three, or  _ very few, _ like none?”

“Chigasaki,” says Chikage, and his tone is enough of an answer.

“Okay. Well. Kinda wish that one had come up earlier.”

“Does it matter? You haven’t dated anyone before either, to my knowledge.”

“Yeah, but I’m not weird about it. I’m not – I mean, even though I’m working blind here, I think I’ve been pretty clear about my feelings. But I never really know what yours are. And, since I’m already trying to be honest, do you know why I agreed to write you a guest post in the first place? Cause I thought – I thought it was some positive sign. That you were offering me this chance, and if I managed to crush it, and prove myself… I don’t know. I guess I’d tricked myself into thinking that if I did well, maybe it’d make you love me.”

Chikage takes a measured breath, laces his fingers deliberately into each other. “To clarify, then. You’ve been hiding from me, because you’re worried I don’t love you, and have been taking steps to try fix that?”

“No.” Itaru exhales. “Kind of.”

“You could’ve just asked.”

“No, I couldn’t. Cause you might have told me you didn’t, and that would’ve killed me. And even if, by some dumb luck, you  _ had _ said yes… it wouldn’t have counted. It would’ve been a pity  _ love you_, because I’d have begged for it.”

“Chigasaki,” Chikage says again. But there’s a different crack in his voice this time, a fault line which runs far deeper, and it’s all the more terrible for it. “I can’t –”

“It’s fine.” He has to fight the urge to curl up; to hug his legs to his chest, the better to protect his most vulnerable parts. “I know this is dumb. And I also knew you weren’t the romantic type from the start, so I adjusted my expectations. You don’t love me, and this is probably as close as we’ll ever get, and that’s fine.”

“I don’t believe that. If you hadn’t wanted something more from me, and if you were really fine with things as they are, you wouldn’t have worked so hard on this post.”

“So you aren’t denying it.”

“Denying what?”

“That we’ve been together for all this time, and you still don’t love me.”

Another one of those silences, the kind that only happens when they’re together, and Itaru asks the wrong question and finds he’s stepped out over the edge of a cliff. Another deep, terrible soundlessness; no light, no air. In this vacuum, he can’t even hear his own breathing.

“And were you worried about this because… because you love  _ me?_”

Itaru’s not the type to have a lot of romantic fantasies, but even he had spared a daydream or two for this moment. He had expected to say  _ I love you _ for the first time as naturally as breathing, softly, like a shared secret. In his most fantastical dreams of all, Chikage had even said it back. But no matter what, it wasn’t supposed to have gone like this; a stumbling confession torn jaggedly out of him, tears burning behind his eyes, at what feels like the very end.

“Yeah. I know the timing on this is all wrong, but I’m pretty seriously in love with you, senpai.”

For the first time during this conversation, Chikage looks away.

“I see. I suppose I do owe you my answer, then.”

“Yeah.”

“In that case… I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m in love with you.”

“Oh.” Itaru’s voice sounds far too hollow. “You don’t think so?”

“I wouldn’t know for sure. I’ve never – you need to understand that I have no point of reference, Chigasaki. And like I keep telling you, I don’t know how to do this. I care for you, in a different way than I’ve ever cared for anyone else, but I can’t even begin to understand the shape of that.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it. I wish I had a different answer for you, but anything else I could say would just be born of my own selfishness. And I’ve already imposed on you this much.”

Chikage presents that so decisively, sliding it home and letting silence settle in its wake, as if it’s the final piece of evidence he expects Itaru to use against him. As if it’s the murder weapon found at the scene of a crime, or grounds for a breakup. But that isn’t what this is. Because Itaru could probably, begrudgingly, come to accept their relationship falling apart if they aren’t on the same page about their feelings; but for them to fail because Chikage’s too used to denying himself? That’s more selfish than anything else he could say or do right now. And it’s not the way that things are going to end.

“But you’ve always been selfish about me. Hazing me as a senior colleague, asking me to get tickets for our plays, using me to join the troupe, and now being in this relationship. And since you’ve come this far already, the least you can do is own that selfishness until the end. So – whatever it is you’re sitting on, say it. Be the same headstrong, egoistic senpai that I fell in love with.”

Chikage stares at him, genuinely taken aback. Like he was expecting to hear anything but that. And then – then he  _ laughs. _

“Don’t,” Itaru says, scrubbing at his eyes. Which does nothing to stop his tears, but at least gets rid of them before they become too visible. “Don’t laugh at me after I spilled everything like that. I’ll kill you.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t… well. You’re really something, Chigasaki.”

“Bad something?”

“Not a bad something. But if you’re telling me to indulge myself, then there’s one thing I want to ask you.”

“Fine.”

“Can you trust that I’ll be in love with you, someday? I know it’s selfish of me to ask, and even more selfish of me to hope you’ll follow through. And I can’t expect you to sit on your hands for months or years, and keep pouring love into me for nothing in return, while I stumble towards understanding my feelings. Because I want to get there, but I don’t know when that might be.”

Chikage is pale under the room’s artificial light as he waits for a reply. His left hand is folded over his right, and the ring on his middle finger gleams.

“Obviously,” Itaru says. Then, again, for good measure: “Obviously! I told you before, there’s nobody else. And that’s still true.”

“But there might be somebody else in the future, who can give you what you need.”

“Yeah, and the world could end tomorrow, but you don’t see me stocking up on tinned food and candles. Cause I don’t wanna trade you in for a better option, even if one actually exists. You’re not… I don’t know, a game console, or an old laptop, or something I’ve outgrown. You’re you, and I’m choosing that.”

“But –”

“Nope. No arguments, senpai. We’re not breaking up over this, and now you’re stuck with me.”

Chikage’s lips twitch. “You always get stubborn about the strangest things.”

“Good thing you’re so weird, then.”

“It wasn’t a complaint. I like that side of you.”

And this is good; this feels normal. Because the fact they can have a serious confrontation about the future of their relationship, and then fall right back into their usual banter, does more than anything to convince Itaru that they might actually be okay. “Jerk. Oh, and also, even though this seems pretty much resolved? I’m definitely gonna make you pay for making the first time I told you I loved you be in such shitty circumstances.”

“I’ve already pledged myself to you for as long as you want me around. Is that payment enough?”

“You don’t get to suddenly be romantic  _ now. _ Not after all that.”

“I do, if it worked.”

“Senpai,” he says, “I’m too tired to do this. Hold me?”

A nod. So Itaru stands, and crosses the room, and plants himself in Chikage’s lap. It doesn’t feel like coming home, or anything cheesy and embarrassing like that; but Chikage is warm and solid, and he clings on more fiercely than usual.

They stay like that for a little while, breathing slowly falling into sync. And once Itaru’s finally capable of rational thought again, about fifty things hit him at once, all of which are mildly stressful. But most prominently is the thought that it’s definitely well after ten o’clock by now, and he’s kind of terrified to check how late it actually is. And Chikage, shifting beneath him, seems to be on the same page.

“Have you eaten tonight?”

“Nah, slept through dinner. You?”

“Not yet. I wanted to get home more than I wanted to eat.”

“Home, like… to me?”

“To home, but also to you.”

That’s cute and all, but as much as he wants to pursue that line of inquiry, he’s also pretty hungry. And they’re probably both so raw from that conversation that it’s better to wait, anyway. “Hey. Asking about dinner wasn’t a hypothetical, was it?”

“Not at all. I thought that, since neither of us have eaten, maybe we could go and get something together.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. But… not yet, okay? I wanna stay like this a bit longer.”

Chikage hums against him, and the vibrations feel like they travel though his whole body. “Anything you want.”

*

_ ~ Chikausa’s Curryiously Spicy Curry Blog ~ _

_ GUEST REVIEW: And Here’s to Roux _

_ December 20 _

_ Hey. You can call me Chi, and I guess Chikausa is my boyfriend. _

_ Yeah, yeah, you guys got that guest post you were asking for. So I guess I should deliver, and tell you more about us before I get stuck into this review. _

_ We met for the first time a couple years back, when we started working together, but we didn’t really get to know each other until several months ago. That’s when we found out we had a common hobby, and things kinda went from there. Also, because of some circumstances on my end, we ended up as roommates way before we got together… so because of all that, it feels like our relationship’s been going on much longer than it has. _

_ Anyway, after one of his last posts went up, he asked if I’d be interested in writing something for his blog. And okay, full disclosure. The truth is, I don’t know much about curry, even though I wind up eating it all the time, or about cooking in general, either. But I know food brings people together. I guess that’s pretty cliche, but it’s true. And TBH, I only agreed to go through with this cause I thought it might bring us closer together, too. _

_ (Spoiler: it worked. Kind of.) _

_ Anyway, that’s enough about us, considering you came here to read about curry. What’s important here is that both Chikausa and I are serious night-owl types, even though we work the same day job. So last week, on a night when we’d both wound up skipping dinner, we agreed to hit up And Here’s to Roux, a twenty-four-hour curry place a couple neighbourhoods over. _

_ (Whenever we go somewhere together, I’m usually the one who ends up driving. Even though I could be using that time to play mobage, and Chikausa doesn’t have that kind of commitment, which is super unfair. But every time I try and get him to drive instead, he just makes a flimsy excuse and refuses to be called on it. Although, because the task always seems to fall to me, and because it always makes me remember the night we got together, when I drove him home from something too, I guess I’m starting to mind a bit less.) _

_ We parked easily, and then we headed in. The place seemed like a neon hellscape, like a cross between a diner and a city street late at night, with fake newspaper plastered on the walls. And we were just about the only people there, so we chose to sit on stools by the front window. Our seats were so high that my feet didn’t touch the ground; but Chikausa’s, tall asshole that he is, did. _

_ Maybe this is just cause it was late, but the service seemed pretty good. A server brought us water right away, then rattled off a list of specials that meant nothing to me. (_ ** _CHIKAUSA’S NOTE:_** _ the specials rotate every week. That night they included a duck vindaloo, a Goan fish curry made with prawns, a saag paneer, and a rogan josh with, interestingly enough, goat.) Of course, Chikausa ordered the spiciest thing on the menu right away. But it took me way longer to decide, bouncing between three different options, so I eventually wound up swallowing my pride and asking for his opinion. _

_ “Chi will have the butter chicken,” he told our waiter. _

_ “Hey, no I won’t. Don’t go picking the mildest thing on the menu, like I’m some kind of spice lightweight.” _

_ “Then you should hurry and choose yourself.” _

_ This guy. I scanned the menu as fast as I could, but nothing new jumped out at me. “Actually, yeah, I’ll get the butter chicken.” _

_ Our waiter double-checked our order, then left us. I made myself look out the window and not at Chikausa. “Don’t say anything.” _

_ I had expected him to tease me about it, but he just took my hand under the table. Which was weird, because neither of us is good with physical affection, but not the kind of weird where I felt like complaining. _

_ “What’s the occasion?” _

_ “Do I need there to be one?” _

_ “Yeah. You’re probably trying to butter me up for something, aren’t you.” _

_ “Well, if you feel that way, I don’t have to keep this up.” _

_ He jokingly tried to take his hand back, but I held on tighter. And even though he’s definitely stronger than me, and could’ve broken out in a heartbeat, he didn’t put up any more resistance. “Nuh-uh. Captured.” _

_ “I suppose I have to yield. Tell me, though, is this part going in your guest post?” _

_ “Yeah,” I said, “and so’s this: love you.” _

_ At first I thought he was going to say something snide, like usual, but this time, he seemed to actually think about it. When he looked back at me, his face was surprisingly serious. “I know. And… thank you for saying it.” _

*

“Hey,” Izumi says, falling into step with him as they leave the supermarket. “I read Chikausa’s latest post.”

Itaru nearly drops the shopping bags she’s made him carry, but manages to pull himself together. “You did?”

She looks up at him with a frankly terrifying amount of intention. “I did.”

“Well. What did you think of it?”

“It was very… you.”

“You know, director, I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

“Hey, I did mean it as one. Thinking about it, it reminded me of the speech you gave before the first performance of KniRoun. It was full of the same kind of honesty.” The look on her face brightens. “Also, it made me want to try the duck vindaloo. Or – what did you say Chikage ordered?”

“He had the, uh. One of the things with goat in it?”

“…Yeah, I’ll ask him myself.”

The rest of their trip down Veludo Way proceeds in companionable silence. Itaru follows in the director’s wake, trying not to let the strain of carrying too many groceries show on his face. Despite the dark and the cold, it’s surprisingly busy out, people hurrying in all directions to buy the last of what they need before Christmas sets in. Izumi only speaks again when they close in on the dorm, juggling her bags as she fumbles for her keys.

“Oh, Itaru. Since you’ve written for Chikausa’s blog, and become an honorary member of the curry cluster, does that mean you won’t complain about curry for dinner anymore?”

“Yeah, dream on.”

She laughs under her breath, and lets them inside.

As soon as they step into the entryway, Izumi is immediately mobbed by about half the population of the dorm, all of whom want something from her. Itaru takes the chance to deposit his share of the groceries in the kitchen, and then slip away. He’d somehow managed to get roped into a supply run almost as soon as he’d arrived home from work, having made the rookie mistake of deciding to sit in the lounge for once, and he’s more than ready to do nothing until dinner.

There’s light coming from under the door of room 103, and Itaru doesn’t realise how much of a relief that is until he’s actually confronted by it. Not that Chikage is likely to be sympathetic to the plight of getting used as a pack mule for curry supplies, or anything, but he’ll listen regardless, and he’s probably good for at least a bit of doting if Itaru tries hard enough.

So he lets himself in, and kicks off his shoes. Chikage’s lounging on one of the chairs, doing something or other on his phone, because of course he is. He glances up at the intrusion, eyes softening.

But for once, Itaru decides to ignore him. In favour of crashing face-down on the sofa, emotionally preparing himself to become one with it, and no doubt wrinkling his work clothes beyond repair in the process. “I’m home,” he mutters into the cushions.

“Welcome back. Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m not gonna die or anything, but I just had to carry sooooo many bags of groceries. Down the whole of Veludo Way, in the cold and the dark. It was seriously awful, senpai.”

“You’re complaining a lot about something you agreed to do.”

“I’m not heartless, you know. I’d never actually let the director lug everything back home herself.”

“There, there,” Chikage says, not actually sounding very commiseratory at all. Itaru rolls over to squint at him. “You poor thing.”

“Talk about adding insult to injury. The least you can do is praise me for my act of chivalry, you know, even though it came at such a high cost. And actually sound like you mean it.”

“I thought chivalry was supposed to go unrewarded.”

“Only by the person you’re actually being chivalrous to. Plus, what about all those stories where being chivalrous earns a knight a beautiful lady’s hand in marriage? Even if it’s meant to be its own reward, it usually comes with others, too.”

“And which KniRoun game are you citing here?”

“None of them.” Chikage blinks at him, and Itaru caves. “…VIII. There’s a huge arc about Gawain and this woman named Ragnelle, where – well, it doesn’t actually matter. The  _ point _ is that I worked hard, and you should spoil me for it.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t have any beautiful daughters to reward you with.”

“You’re such an ass.”

“Then, since that’s not an option, maybe I should reward you with myself?”

Chikage’s face gives nothing away, carefully set into its usual expression, and Itaru really, truly considers throwing one of the sofa cushions at him. Except his aim is so bad that he’d probably miss; and also, that wouldn’t prove nearly enough of a distraction from whether or not Chikage had just jokingly offered to marry him. “Hey, you don’t get to turn this around on me, senpai. You don’t!”

“I –”

Luckily, he’s saved from Chikage pressing the advantage by a knock on the door. Itaru levers himself to his feet, grateful for the distraction, and tries to pretend he isn’t scrambling to compose himself. “I’ll get it. I’m closer, anyway.”

Their visitor, as it turns out, is Homare, which is unexpected enough to sober Itaru up. But what’s even weirder is that Hisoka is hovering behind him, back hunched and hands stuffed deep into his pockets.

“Ah, there you are. You haven’t been answering my messages, Itaru.”

“Uh, yeah, been kinda busy. What’s up?”

“I was just wondering if your… project, of sorts, had gone as intended. We both were.”

Chikage’s voice comes from behind him. “What project?”

Hisoka frowns. There’s a long, terrible moment where his visible eye narrows; then he settles himself, and Chikage’s presence at Itaru’s back lessens a little.

“Nothing you should worry about,” Itaru says, trying to maintain an air of normalcy regardless. At least it’s impossible to stay embarrassed with everything else going on. “But yeah, it did.”

“Wonderful! Well then, with everything swept and settled, I’ll take my leave. But, if you should require my help again –”

“Yeah, I know where to find you. Thanks again, though. You really came through for me.” 

“Naturally. And now: adieu!”

Homare trots off, in the direction of whatever it is he has planned next, but Hisoka lingers. His eye sweeps from Chikage to Itaru, and back to Chikage again.

“April,” he says, voice all intention.

Chikage sighs. “I know.”

Hisoka nods, and then he leaves too. Itaru lets out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“I won’t ask about any of that if you don’t,” he says, turning back to Chikage, even though it’s pretty obvious what both Homare and Hisoka meant. They both need to pretend to have their secrets, after all. “Cool?”

“Agreed. I’m surprised, though. I didn’t realise Hisoka thought so highly of you.”

“I bought him a marshmallow curry the other night. Of course he does.”

The joke doesn’t quite land, though, betraying his uncertainty. But Chikage doesn’t press it, and hustles their conversation onwards.

“And how  _ was _ Some Like It Hot’s infamous dessert curry?”

“Seriously awful. I couldn’t even look at it.”

“That’s what I thought.” With the ghost of a smile, Chikage nudges him back into their room. “We should close the door. It’s letting cold air in, and I know you’re going to complain.”

“Am not. I’m going to be at my nice, toasty PC, thanks.”

“You’re sure I can’t persuade you otherwise?”

“We’ll see. I’m a busy guy, you know. Quests to grind and PNGs of anime girls to obtain.”

“Well then, Chigasaki, thank you for clearing time in your packed schedule for me.”

By Chikage’s standards, that joke is verging on dangerously soft. Itaru steps back and shuts the door.

“Okay, fine. I guess I’ll pay attention to you.”

“Consider it the price of the reward of chivalry.”

Itaru calls a break to get changed out of his work clothes, and then they wind up on the sofa the way they always do; not only would moving to one of their beds feel too intentional, but it’s going to be a pain climbing down when they get called for dinner. Since his back is still aching from the grocery run, Itaru opts to lie down and rest his head in Chikage’s lap, and momentarily lets himself press his cheek into Chikage’s palm.

Then he tilts his phone on its side, and boots up Idlemeister. It was still in maintenance when he’d last checked, about two seconds before Izumi had rounded him up to raid the supermarket, but that should be over by now; and maintenance ending means the new event should have dropped. And while he doesn’t have to go super hard on this one, he’s not about to pass up the raft of F2P gems up for grabs, either. He taps his nails against the glass as the game loads.

“Anything interesting?”

Itaru raises his phone so it blocks his view of Chikage’s face, and is quietly delighted when his boyfriend moves it out of the way. “Nah. You wouldn’t think so, anyway.”

“Well, is there anything  _ you’d  _ find interesting?”

“New event. They all play pretty much the same, though, and I’m not super into the cards this time. Like… look.” He tips his phone upwards, now that he’s made it to the game’s home screen, and navigates to the event page. “This event’s cards are winter-themed, which is pretty standard for December, but Imeis went with this horrible Christmas colour scheme. The SSR is whatever, cause Annetta looks good in pretty much anything. But, like, this SR of Yukiha? Can’t believe they’d put her in such an ugly green when it makes her hair look flat.”

“Unthinkable, really.”

“Exactly! And this game’s art is usually so good, too. RIP the YukihaPs who have to tier for her anyway.”

“They’d spend time and money ranking for a card, even if they think it’s ugly?”

“Well, yeah. It’s about the principle. About demonstrating your pure love for best girl, even if she’s only the SR, and even when the art team fucks up and puts a blue girl in dark green.” Itaru cricks his neck, the better to size Chikage up. God, it’s unfair that he’s this handsome, even from the world’s least flattering angle. “But why’re you asking, senpai?”

“Well. You did spend the better part of a fortnight working to understand the things I like.”

Chikage’s hands are flexing in the way that means he’s trying not to fidget. It’s… kind of sweet, actually. Itaru snorts, and bumps his face against his knuckles. “I appreciate it, but if you were serious about trying to fall in love with me, you should probably stay as far away from games as you can. They do strange things to people. Also, I know you cleared KniRoun IV for our production, but it’s too weird to imagine you gaming by choice. And also also, you’re such a cheat character that your skills probably extend to games, and you’d probably turn out to be better than me at anything you tried. And then my elite-gamer rep would be in tatters.”

“And so the truth comes out.”

“That’s a joke. I’d school you in any game you want on any day of the week, senpai.”

“I’m sure you would. But, speaking of trying to understand each other’s hobbies: does the mysterious Chi plan on writing a sequel to his Curryiously Spicy guest post? It went over well, you know. Commenters are already clamouring to have you back.”

“Nope. No way. I feel like I aged fifty years just writing that one.”

“That’s a pity. It was endearing, seeing you work so hard on something so different to your usual.”

“You did say you liked me serious.”

Chikage relaxes his hands, lets his slack fingers rest in Itaru’s hair. “I do.”

“But the problem with sequels,” Itaru says, “is that they’re under a lot of pressure. Like… people hated KniRoun II when it came out, because it did a lot of things differently to the first one, even though it’s just as good. And I don’t want people to think I’m the KniRoun II of curry blog guest posts.”

“Would you rather be the KniRoun IV? Or was VII your favourite?”

“Depends on the day. But you know what I meant.”

“Noted. And, for what it’s worth, you don’t actually have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“Yeah, I know.”

They lapse into silence, a familiar one, and neither of them seems inclined to break it. Chikage’s fingers scratch lightly at Itaru’s scalp as he thinks. Itaru makes himself focus back on Imeis, and loads up a medley. 

Time goes strange around him, the way it always does when he’s playing rhythm games. The songs he has to play are easy ones, even on the hardest difficulty, and he gets most of the way to a full combo before screwing up right at the end. And when he surfaces, it feels like it could be five seconds or five hours later. Realistically, it’s been five minutes, but Chikage seems strange and far away. Itaru sets his phone down, and nudges him in the stomach.

“What’re you thinking about?”

“Hm?”

“I asked what you’re thinking about, senpai. I can hear the wheels in your head turning.”

“Sequels.”

“Huh?”

“I’m thinking about sequels. Or, more accurately, not sequels themselves, but… whether things always go over worse and worse the longer they continue, as you said. If everything which follows something good is inevitably going to suffer from expectation, until it’s crushed under that weight.”

“I mean… first off, I don’t think I said anything like that at all. And probably not everything does? There’s stuff like wine, which is meant to get better the longer you leave it alone. Or Spring Troupe, cause we definitely couldn’t have pulled off KniRoun or Harugaoka back when we started, and look at us now.”

“I think so as well, but that isn’t quite what I meant. Because what I’m trying to get at is that I want to keep getting better with you. I didn’t handle this properly, when it came up, but… I wanted to thank you for being in love with me. I can only hope my feelings will strengthen with time, too, and match yours.”

Itaru’s cheeks are suddenly far too warm. He rolls onto his side, even though trying to hide it is definitely a losing battle. “Yeah, yeah. I guess I’ll look forward to it.”

“You know, it’d probably help my feelings grow if you told me that you love me.”

“What, like right now?”

“Like right now.”

He casts Chikage the most sceptical look possible out of the corner of his eye. “You’re just saying that cause you want to hear it.”

“Maybe you should’ve thought about the consequences before encouraging me to be selfish.”

“I mean, I think the consequences are pretty good. Or at least worth all the trouble.” Itaru turns his head to look at him properly, because they may as well do this right. Chikage’s face is soft with some fierce tenderness, naked with the hunger to someday feel the same, and suddenly, he almost can’t bear to look directly into that light. Almost. “Love you, senpai.”

“Thank you. Because, in all honesty, I needed to hear that. And I promise, Chigasaki… I’ll come and meet you soon.”

**Author's Note:**

> with special thanks to tabby.
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/farewellarcadia)


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